Through his clampdown on corruption, dissent and relative freedoms, Chinese President Xi Jinping has alienated various groups within society. However, in the absence of a serious economic downturn and a rift within the Party’s leadership, discontent is unlikely to unseat him for the foreseeable future.

The US Army’s Future Vertical Lift programme is premised on an obsolete concept of employment. The helicopter will continue to be a critical tool in warfare, but like the horse in the Second World War, its place on the modern battlefield is as a beast of burden

If lethal autonomous weapons systems are to be used in war, a moral framework to guide their ethical use is warranted. Despite the limitations it may pose on their capabilities, a rules-based moral framework is the best approach given the current state of technology.

Ordinary citizens in Western countries are under-prepared to deal with extended disruptions to power or the internet. To strengthen resilience to greyzone attacks, societies should start stress testing themselves.

Russia’s first UCAV prototype marks a milestone for the country’s troubled efforts to field truly modern airpower capabilities, and should also be a wakeup call to NATO Allies still publicly opposed to or unconvinced by the need for Western UCAVs to be part of future capability plans

With the Baltic states on-track to become independent from centralised Russian control over their power networks, the Kremlin has demonstrated an alarming potential to disconnect them from its power grid before they are ready to join the continental European network.

Michael S Neiberg reviews Famous Battles and How They Shaped the Modern World: From Troy to Courtrai, 1200 BC–1320 AD and Famous Battles and How They Shaped the Modern World: 1588–1943, From the Armada to Stalingrad, edited by Beatrice G Heuser and Athena S Leoussi.

Through his clampdown on corruption, dissent and relative freedoms, Chinese President Xi Jinping has alienated various groups within society. However, in the absence of a serious economic downturn and a rift within the Party’s leadership, discontent is unlikely to unseat him for the foreseeable future.

If lethal autonomous weapons systems are to be used in war, a moral framework to guide their ethical use is warranted. Despite the limitations it may pose on their capabilities, a rules-based moral framework is the best approach given the current state of technology.

Ordinary citizens in Western countries are under-prepared to deal with extended disruptions to power or the internet. To strengthen resilience to greyzone attacks, societies should start stress testing themselves.

With the Baltic states on-track to become independent from centralised Russian control over their power networks, the Kremlin has demonstrated an alarming potential to disconnect them from its power grid before they are ready to join the continental European network.

How newly-elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy responds to Moscow’s provision of Russian passports to residents in occupied Donbas will not only set the tone for his administration’s foreign policy, but could seriously unsettle Putin’s project of consolidating a sphere of influence in the post-Soviet region.

The problem is that the SA-21 does not pose the main threat to aviation in a high-intensity warfighting scenario. Any Russian commander who fired a long-range SA-21 missile at a helicopter that was not posing a direct threat to their battery would be guilty of gross incompetence for wasting munitions critical to the wider campaign. While the suppression of long-range air defence systems is a...

Part of the objection in the West is that to be credible in a high-intensity combat situation which would almost inevitably include heavy jamming and communications denial, a UCAV must have the ability to detect, classify, prioritise and engage targets with lethal weapons without real-time human yes/no oversight. Those targets would hardly be ambiguous – civilians seldom operate ground or air-...

The reason for the prominence of these expeditionary assault forces is clear. These naval expeditionary formations—built around a large-deck amphibious assault ship, an amphibious transport dock, and a dock landing ship—have been the ones used extensively for a wide array of missions short of war: from anti-piracy patrols, to personnel evacuation, to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief,...

Programmers often lament how programs they have written would be different if they were able to delete them and start again. In most cases, programmers do not have the opportunity to implement what they have learned while tackling the often-unique challenges associated with a project; rather they often find themselves making ad hoc fixes and jury-rigging solutions as many people work on the same...

The US is not presently able to conduct MDO. At the Association of the United States’ Army (AUSA) Global Force Symposium – held in Huntsville from 25-28 March - MDO’s architect, Lieutenant General Eric Wesley observed, ‘a good concept describes the future and is presently infeasible because you have to change to achieve it’. The operational concept requires significant developments in...

The US Army’s Future Capabilities Command will make a decision by 2023 on whether a new tank is necessary and how to proceed with its development. Likewise, the UK is set to deal with a slew of Challenger 2 modernisation issues under austere army budget constraints. One simple suggestion as these upgrade and acquisition processes begin: seek input and feedback from the operators early. The author...

In response the USMC has acknowledged the need for a ‘paradigm shift and the reinvigoration of a unified naval approach that effectively integrates sea control and maritime power projection capabilities’. The USMC’s answer – still being refined – is Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO). Rather than being supported by the US Navy at sea, the Marines instead provide crucial support to the...

In early 2018, a US forward operating base in Syria came under fire from an unknown massed force, which included tanks and artillery. The US commander, Brigadier General Jonathon Braga, ordered his force to return fire in self-defence. In a three-hour engagement US artillery, supported by layers of ISR assets and airstrikes, killed and wounded up to 300 enemy fighters, and many support and...

This paper aims to support domestic authorities that will regulate virtual asset service providers and supervise their compliance with AML/CTF regulations in identifying next steps they should take to effectively prevent criminal abuse of cryptocurrency

This paper looks at how social media platforms have been instrumentalised for a variety of purposes by terrorist organisations in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, and how the governments of those countries have tackled the issue

This paper synthesises research on post-incident communications from a range of fields – including terrorism, crisis communications, mass-shooter incidents, serial offenders, and suicide studies – to identify guidelines for the development of a post-terrorist incident communications framework.

This paper provides recommendations for what government and social media companies can do in the context of Jammu and Kashmir’s developing online theatre of both potential radicalisation and recruitment

This paper provides an overview of the International Cyber Terrorism Regulation Project, an online resource consisting of a compilation of online regulatory resources in the field of counterterrorism, and an analytical framework for their use. The project is funded by the Global Research Network on Terrorism and Technology.

This paper describes a model of the flow of users between social media platforms and surface web pages to access jihadist content, which provides an approximate picture of the jihadist information ecosystem and how multiple platforms are used to disseminate content.

The UK's 2016 National Cyber Security Strategy reaches its conclusion in 2021. At the midway point of the current strategy, and with an upcoming Spending Review, the focus should now be on building the next strategy. This Briefing Paper poses a series of questions to help frame this debate.

The UK has been instrumental in developing many of the systems relied upon by EU law enforcement agencies, but the advent of Brexit means that the UK may lose access to these important tools. This briefing paper examines three options for UK–EU law enforcement information sharing post-Brexit.

Written by Lord Peter Ricketts, former National Security Adviser and UK Ambassador to France, this Briefing Paper recommends that the UK and France step up joint work on defence, security and nuclear deterrence policy.

Despite a looming split, the UK must seek to create a new relationship with the EU while strengthening ties with major European and non-European partners. Such measures could allow the UK to continue to contribute to resolving major security challenges.

Dr Igor Sutyagin argues that while Russia's recent military modernisation constitutes an important change in its own right, the most significant change is not to the size of the Russian military but to the nature of its forces: instead of being primarily structured for defensive operations (in case of a hypothetical large-scale military conflict), the Russian armed forces are now gaining an offensive-oriented structure, with capabilities tailored for large-scale war.

India’s power projection remains in a nascent stage while its threat perceptions continue to be dominated by local threats. But as the country’s power, interests and capabilities all grow, India may once more find itself using military force beyond its land borders

Despite a decade-long UN arms embargo, North Korea continues to export conventional weapons to state and non-state clients around the world. Understanding the drivers of this trade is essential if the sanctions regime is to be strengthened.

The US Army’s Future Vertical Lift programme is premised on an obsolete concept of employment. The helicopter will continue to be a critical tool in warfare, but like the horse in the Second World War, its place on the modern battlefield is as a beast of burden

As the US Army and British Army eye upgrades to their respective main battle tanks, the often-overlooked operator’s perspective calls for the focus to fall on maintainability in the field over incremental upgrades to firepower and survivability

The Royal Artillery’s ability to fight peer and near-peer threats has stagnated after two decades in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Modernising Defence Programme now offers the Royal Artillery a chance to consider the future of fires.

In Project Haldane, the British Army’s endeavour to breathe new life into its reserve forces, the Army faces a unique opportunity to ensure its Reserve is configured for the next war; how it reacts may determine its future as a Reference Force.

The joint Russia–China Vostok exercises demonstrated some military cooperation between the two. However, the more significant event was the concomitant Eastern Economic Forum, an investment forum hosted in Russia’s Far East. Amid a depressed economy, Russia is attempting to encourage Chinese investment in the Far East, but many deals with China have fallen through and large-scale investment is...

Despite the slow proliferation of tilt-rotor aircraft across the special operations community, conventional rotary wing platforms remain a primary and critical capability for Special Operations Forces (SOF) across the contemporary operating environment

The British Army’s new Strike concept has attracted much negative comment. But it is considerably more robust and well-founded than its critics claim, and it has the potential to offer infantry brigades the ability to march and manoeuvre under armour at far greater distances than is currently possible.

Commercial drones are cheap assets that have the potential to be exploited by innovative military organisations. Their combat potential is already being explored by adversarial groups; not taking the initiative now could leave Western forces at a relative disadvantage

Since the military junta took power in 1988, Myanmar has expanded its military capabilities by introducing both new and used assets. However, several challenges remain if the junta is to maintain its current capabilities.

In this preview episode of the 'Suspicious Transaction Report' podcast, Isabella Chase talks to Tom Keatinge and Nick Parfitt about the EU’s second attempt at a money laundering blacklist, the NCA’s...

In this episode Karin talks to Sir John Scarlett about his career in the British Secret Intelligence Service, including his time as Chief. They discuss the collapse of the Soviet Union, 9/11 and even...

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